Featured Research

Of dinosaurs and mathematics: Classification of a dinosaur bone found in Australia reexamined

Date:

June 5, 2014

Source:

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology - OIST

Summary:

Dinosaurs and mathematics do not seem like an obvious pair, but for one professor they are a logical match. Palaeontologists have now reexamined the classification of a dinosaur bone found in Australia through expertise in mathematics. Mathematicians were able to help the paleontologists reclassify a single arm bone as belonging to a dinosaur family previously believed not to have existed in the Southern Hemisphere.

Dinosaurs and mathematics do not seem like an obvious pair, but for Professor Robert Sinclair and his Mathematical Biology Unit, they are a logical match. Sinclair was part of a team that recently published a paper in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology that reexamined the classification of a dinosaur bone found in Australia. Using his expertise in mathematics, Sinclair was able to help the paleontologists reclassify a single arm bone as belonging to a dinosaur family previously believed not to have existed in the Southern Hemisphere. This research may lead to revisions in the current thinking about how continents were connected in the ancient world.

Related Articles

The bone in question, an ulna, or arm bone, was found in southern Australia. The researchers named this new species of dinosaur Serendipaceratops arthurcclarkei, and classified it as belonging to the Neoceratopsia family, which includes the famous dinosaur Triceratops. Not long after that paper was published, another research group published a paper saying that the bone could not be ceratopsian, partly because that family of dinosaurs existed only in the Northern Hemisphere and the land masses had already split, therefore there was no way that a bone from that family could be found in Australia. One caveat to this logic is that the data used to determine when the continents split is based on fossil data. "It becomes a chicken and egg scenario," says Sinclair. If the data used to establish a theory is then refuted by finding something unexpected, that theory should be challenged, which is not an easy thing to do.

This is where Sinclair can use mathematics to provide solid evidence for one theory or another. He is interested in using mathematics to solve difficult problems in fields of research where current methodologies are not sufficient. He was attracted to paleontology for this reason, particularly in his native Australia. After an invitation to speak at OIST, Dr. Thomas Rich, one of the Australian paleontologists on the paper, asked Sinclair for help in showing that the bone he had analyzed belonged to Ceratopsia.

Sinclair went about investigating whether the dimensions and characteristics of the bone matched other members of the Ceratopsia family, or whether they matched a different family. Sinclair said the challenge was to "use mathematics in a field where it is not commonly used or well understood and utilize it in a way that is understandable to those in the field." First he had to find a characteristic that could be measured on the bone in question and the same type of bone in other species and families of dinosaurs, in this case, the flatness of the bone. He had to mathematically account for variability in the bones since fossils tend to become broken or deformed over time. Some paleontologists were still skeptical of what the mathematics really meant. This is where the hard work began, and Sinclair had to find other measurements to make and used several different mathematical techniques to show that they all reached the same conclusion.

In the end, he showed mathematical data of three different types in order to convince certain paleontologists that the bone in question belonged to the Ceratopsia family. The driving point for Sinclair is using mathematics to tackle difficult questions when conventional methods in the field are not sufficient. His statistical analysis, combined with other analyses provided by the co-authors, was convincing enough to put the bone back into the Ceratopsia family.

Sinclair says he is excited about people finding more dinosaur bones in Australia to see how it challenges the current thinking about what did and did not exist on the continent. As for his other endeavors, he looks forward to working in new fields and figuring out the "dance of what you would do as a mathematician and what is accepted in that community." With that goal in mind, it is easy to see how dinosaurs and mathematics formed a logical pair for Sinclair.

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology - OIST. (2014, June 5). Of dinosaurs and mathematics: Classification of a dinosaur bone found in Australia reexamined. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 3, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140605082950.htm

Featured Research

Mar. 3, 2015 — The precise dating of ancient charcoal found near a skull is helping reveal a unique period in prehistory. The Manot Cave, a natural limestone formation, had been sealed for some 15,000 years. It was ... full story

Mar. 2, 2015 — Richard III is the only male to be discovered at infamous former car-park site. A mysterious lead coffin found close to the site of Richard III's hastily dug grave at the Grey Friars friary has now ... full story

Mar. 1, 2015 — A study of how climate change has affected emperor penguins over the last 30,000 years found that only three populations may have survived during the last ice age, and that the Ross Sea in Antarctica ... full story

Feb. 27, 2015 — That swim tracks made by tetrapods occur in high numbers in deposits from the Early Triassic is well known. What is less clear is why the tracks are so abundant and well preserved. Paleontologists ... full story

Feb. 27, 2015 — DNA evidence shows surprise cultural connections between Britain and Europe 8,000 years ago. Researchers found evidence for a variety of wheat at a submerged archaeological site off the south coast ... full story

Feb. 26, 2015 — The miniweight boxing title of the animal world belongs to the mantis shrimp, a cigar-sized crustacean whose front claws can deliver an explosive 60-mile-per-hour blow akin to a bullet leaving the ... full story

Feb. 24, 2015 — Thirteen million years ago, as many as seven different species of crocodiles hunted in the swampy waters of what is now northeastern Peru, new research shows. This hyperdiverse assemblage, revealed ... full story

Feb. 24, 2015 — Tropical turtle fossils discovered in Wyoming reveal that when Earth got warmer, prehistoric turtles headed north. But if today's turtles try the same technique to cope with warming habitats, they ... full story

Feb. 24, 2015 — A French-Kenyan research team has just described a new fossil ancestor of today's hippo family. This discovery bridges a gap in the fossil record separating these animals from their closest ... full story

Feb. 24, 2015 — Climate-driven plague outbreaks in Asia were repeatedly transmitted over several centuries into southern European harbors, an international team of researchers has found. This finding contrasts the ... full story

Related Stories

Mar. 5, 2014 — A new dinosaur species found in Portugal may be the largest land predator discovered in Europe, as well as one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs from the Jurassic. T. gurneyi had blade-shaped ... full story

June 28, 2013 — Tracking the growth of dinosaurs and how they changed as they grew is difficult. Using a combination of biomechanical analysis and bone histology, palaeontologists from Beijing, Bristol, and Bonn ... full story

Jan. 27, 2011 — Researchers have determined that a fossilized dinosaur bone found in New Mexico confounds the long established paradigm that the age of dinosaurs ended between 65.5 and 66 million years ... full story

Mar. 25, 2010 — Scientists have found the first ever evidence that tyrannosaur dinosaurs existed in the southern continents. They identified a hip bone found at Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Australia, as belonging to ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.